Absolutely anyone can learn how to baby sign and the signs can be learned at home using Bamba’s First Comforts. It’s easy for grandparents and all the family to learn.
Archive for the ‘Baby Signing Gift Forum’ Category
Can you teach baby signing at home?
Monday, January 25th, 2010 Tips for 2010
Sunday, January 3rd, 2010
Happy New Year to all our bloggers and customers
As you’ll know using gestures with your baby is simple and fun so keep it up through 2010 and let us know your success stories.
Don’t forget to send us photos if you’d like them to be up-loaded to the site.
If you’re new to baby signing then the benefits are:
signing promotes talking skills – signing babies typically speak earlier
it promotes understanding of spoken language – you sign and speak simultaneously. Baby sees and hears what you are communicating.
it promotes play and interaction.
Bamba’s First Comforts are fun and educational. They’re great for busy parents and are designed for quick and easy start up.
Keep signing and let us know how you get on.
Yvonne
Madhouse family review – December 2009
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
I have to admit, before this box arrived, I was extremely dubious about baby signing. I sometimes think babies are over-stimulated and pushed too far these days. Long gone are the days when they could just lie happily gurgling in their cot playing with their feet – now they have to do Little Swimmers, Baby Gym, Baby Massage, they can listen to Mozart in the womb with baby-friendly CDs, Baby Yoga … There is even a whole range of Baby Einstein products, but they recently had to give back money to disgruntled parents who suddenly realised that despite watching the DVDs, their tots weren’t turning into precocious geniuses ! Well, I say, for goodness sake, let them enjoy their baby days, they’ll have enough pressure put on them when they start at school ! Baby signing sounded to me like just one more thing for pushy mums to introduce so they can show off their baby’s new skill at mother & baby group !
Well … I have to admit, I’ve changed my mind ! I’m sure some mums could manage to turn it into a competitive sport but it’s actually a whole load of fun for baby but also mum, dad and older brothers and sisters.
So what is baby-signing ? I totally confused my mum and dad when I said I had a baby-signing kit for Pierre – they said “Umm, but … he’s not deaf ?!?”. Well, for the uninitiated, baby signing is a way of letting babies communicate before they can speak or form coherent sentences. It draws on natural instincts – pretty much right from birth, Pierre used to “tell me” he wanted milk by opening and closing his mouth several times and moving his head towards my boobs ! Another common example is when babies hold their arms out to be picked up. They manage to get their message across without saying a word. Baby signing helps them to do this by showing them other gestures they can use to communicate things. If they can manage to get their message across to you, they will feel a lot less frustrated and you’ll be able to respond to their needs quicker so that means less crying. Which means happy baby and happy mum !
On the Baby Sign Factory website, they explain : “Speech involves a complex co-ordination of impulses from the brain to allow for the fine muscle control of breathing out whilst moving the vocal cords, tongue, lips and palate. It’s not until about 12 months that babies say their first spoken words, and even then they continue to use ’signs’ to fill in the gaps in their spoken vocabulary. Signing can sometimes help with the Terrible Twos when toddlers have lots to say but not enough words to say it.” It may sound ambitious but all of our kids have been brought up bilingual from birth. Friends and family are always amazed to see them switching easily from English to French and back again while they’re still knee-high to a grasshopper, but they’ve always done it so it just seems normal to them. If you introduce a few simple signs for baby to assimilate at a young age, it should be a piece of cake.
Having said all that, at 4 months, Pierre is slightly too young to be properly introduced to baby signing. The website suggests starting at about 6 months. But as soon as the very cute Bamba’s First Comforts Baby Signing Kit arrived in the house, there was no holding back Sophie and Juliette ! Straight into big sister mode, they set about teaching him all the signs straight away ! Did it work ? Well, Pierre didn’t reproduce any of the signs but he certainly spent a good half an hour giggling and smiling away at them ! He loved all the attention he was getting and he loved grabbing hold of the super-soft toys for a cuddle too – especially the monkey and the blanket !
So what do you actually get ? You get a sturdy box a bit larger than a shoebox that is compartmentalised with a cute little soft toy in each section. In this ‘First Comforts’ box, you get Bamba the monkey, a spoon, a bottle, a blanket, a wash mitt and a mirror. These represent the words to be used in signing – sleep, eat, drink, etc – so baby will be able to tell you he’s tired, hungry, thirsty, wants to play, wants a bath or wants some “ah – look at me” time ! As toys in themselves, Pierre loved them – they’re ultrasoft, small enough for baby hands and they obviously make interesting shapes for him to suck and chew on. Juliette also liked using them to play with her dollies, so I’m sure they will be played with long after baby has mastered the art of talking.
When Pierre started getting tired or bored (not sure which, maybe I could teach him the signs for those words too !), I made it into a game with the girls. I showed them the signs in the little book and we mimed them together then they had to find which toy related to the sign. Then we swapped over and I showed them the toy and they did the signs. They were having great fun, giggling their heads off and picked up all six signs within minutes ! So as well as an educational/communicative tool, it also makes a great game for the whole family to enjoy.
So whether or not Pierre grasps the basics of signing and manages to communicate before he can speak, I’ve been won over by baby signing but in particular by the Bamba’s First Comforts Baby Signing Kit. Just as a way of getting all three kids to spend some quality time playing together nicely, laughing their heads off and practising their skills (as well as learning the signs, they’re practising their memory and word association skills), it’s a great investment !
What’s even better is that they will soon be bringing out other Bamba’s Chatter Boxes for you to add to your collection. Now, what’s the sign for “that’s brilliant” ?!
star rating : 5/5
RRP : £29.99
for more information : http://www.babysignfactory.com/
Practical Parenting and Pregnancy Award
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009Baby Sign Factory were finalists in the Practical Parenting and Pregnancy Awards 09/10 for Bamba’s First Comforts
A sure sign for first words – a review by totology.co.uk
Friday, December 11th, 2009
Bamba’s First Comforts Sign Language Kit has been reviewed by Heather Chambers at www,totology.co.uk and says “Bamba takes educational toys to a whole new level. The kit, which has been designed by speech and language therapists, not only teaches your baby to communicate, but helps them understand what you’re saying to them as well. Designed for use with 6-12 month olds, this approach can be used from birth and is a fun way to play and interact with your child, while teaching them something new.
Each piece of the kit corresponds to a basic sign. There’s a bottle for ‘drink’, spoon for ‘food’, blanket for ‘bed’, wash cloth for ‘bath’, mirror for ‘look at me’ and monkey for ‘playtime’. By using each item as you make the sign, babies quickly learn to understand what you’re saying and use the same signs back to ask for what they want. Who’d have thought a 6 month old baby could ask to be put to bed without crying? And because Bamba products are developed by speech therapists you don’t have to worry that signing could get in the way of your baby learning to talk. Signing encourages understanding of words which can actually help babies get those vital first words out earlier. Comes with a parent guide book to get you started.
£32 at JoJoMamanBebe“
Taking Orders for Christmas
Sunday, November 1st, 2009
If you have a baby or are looking for a gift for a baby for this Christmas then Bamba’s First Comforts is for you.
Imagine your baby is crying. Does he mean I’m hungry, I’m thirsty or I am tired? Bamba will teach your baby to sign “drink” when he’s thirsty,“food” when he is hungry and “sleep” when he’s tired (as well as other important first words!).
Go to http://www.babysignfactory.com/shop.html for Bamba’s latest Christmas offers.
MumKnowsBest Loves Bamba
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Discover the techniques used by speech and language therapists to communicate with babies. Bamba was created and developed by experienced Speech and Language therapists to promote early communication skills in all babies without complex learning cycles for their parents.
Suitable for all babies from six months, this award winning premium quality kit contains Bamba, a cuddly monkey and 5 plush toys each one representing baby’s first words.
Why MumKnowsBest Loves it…
Bamba’s Baby Signing Kit is an interactive tool that you can use to communicate with your baby. It teaches the signs for your baby’s most common activites: playing, bathtime, drinking, bedtime, food and awareness of themselves. The kit is designed for ages six to 18 months and is particularly good when babies are showing an interest in the world around them. Within the package comes six soft toy items and a detailed booklet outlining how to use them to stimulate communication with your baby, through play and using sign language. The idea is that this kit will encourage babies to broaden their communication skills, as babies can often communicate with their hands, such as pointing, clapping and waving, long before they develop speech.
What is great about the kit is that it is stimulating for the children and gives us adults some inspiration at playtime when you can sometimes get stuck in the same routine of what you know already works for you and your child. With more than one child, it would be a useful tool for them to interact with one another and promote learning amongst siblings.
Not an essential for your baby’s needs but a great idea for a Christening or first birthday present.
The baby signing debate: the supporter’s view
Sunday, September 27th, 2009Signing the way?
Classes for signing seem to be springing up everywhere. So are they just a fad for pushy parents, or do they sign the way to enhanced parent-children relationships? Should they be part of Surestart provision? Having developed her department’s Accelerating Babies’ Communication Programme, Tania Allen is clear about the route we should take.
As a speech and language therapist with a particular interest in using positive interaction techniques to develop delayed language, I was fascinated when one of the parents attending a parent programme I was running handed me ‘Joseph Garcia’s SIGN with your BABY Complete Kit’ that she had been sent by her brother in America. The pack advocated the introduction of Amercian Sign Language to normally developing, hearing babies as young as 8 months. The idea of introducing signing to babies in the absence of any difficulties or risk of delay was new to me. We have all seen how the introduction of signs has a positive impact on our language delayed population, but what would be the point of signing with pre-verbal infants who were likely to begin to speak within the next 12 to 18 months anyway?
On watching the video the evidence to support such a move was compelling and I was hooked. Onto the screen came baby after baby signing ‘more’, ‘milk’, ‘hurt’ and much more. Here were babies showing that they had thoughts and needs that would previously have gone unexpressed, as their spoken language was simply not yet developed enough. Children able to express themselves at a much earlier age than would be possible with their spoken language meant that parents reported reduced levels of frustration. In addition an intimate bond could be seen between parent and infant as the signs were taught and understood.
Intrigued, I set about finding out more and discovered the original research into the use of baby signing took place in America in the late 1980s. Almost simultaneously research was taking place in two camps, Joseph Garcia in one and Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn in the other. Having worked as an interpreter, Joseph Garcia had a wide network of friends in the deaf community and he had noted how the hearing offspring of signing deaf parents began to use signing long before their spoken language developed. In 1987, Garcia began to research the use of Amercian Sign Language with hearing babies who are exposed to signs regularly and consistently at six to seven months of age can begin expressive communication by their eighth or ninth month.
Drs. Linda acredolo and Susan Goodwyn conducted a longitudinal study funded by the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development. The study showed that signing babies understood more words, had larger vocabularies and engaged in more sophisticated play than non-signing babies. Parents of the signing babies in the study noted decreased frustration, increased communication, and enriched parent-infant bonding. Signing babies also displayed an increased interest in books (Moore et al, 2001).
They revisited the families in the original study when the children were seven and eight years old. The children who signed as babies had a mean IQ of 114 compared to the non-signing control group’s mean of 102 (Acredolo and Goodwyn, 2000).
Garcia, Acredolo and Goodwyn then set about pioneering the use of signing with babies. Joseph Garcia developed the SIGNwith your BABY program and and Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn produced a book called Baby Signs.
The overall message in both is similar, although there is on main difference: Joseph Garcia promotes the use of a standard sign language such as American Sign Language or British Sign Language, whereas Acredolo and Goodwyn advocate parents and infants making uptheir own signs.
Baby signing classes for hearing babies were then introduced in the United States and, due to the success of the programes in America, baby signing is becoming increasingly popular in the United Kingdom, with advocates for signing appearing on daytime television, news shows and in the press.
Following further research into the field, I contacted Joseph Garcia’s team and registered as a SIGN with your BABY presenter. I initially began running baby signing courses as an independent venture. It seemed to make prefect sense. Teaching signs such as waving ‘bye bye’ and hand rhymes such as ‘Insi Winsey Spider’ is readily acceptable, so why not build up the ability to use hand gestures that appear at a developmentally earlier age than speech?
However, as a consequence of the recent press and television coverage, local interest in baby signing was developing. Surestart workers, parents and health visitors were asking if our speech and language therapy service ran baby signing courses. The time seemed ripe to develop a preventative programme that capitalised on parents’ interest in something new but also ’snuck in’ the positive adult-child interaction techniques to a captive audience that would otherwise have been hard to reach. Subsequently I developed the Accelerating Babies’ Communication programme to address the demand.
Positive interaction strategies
The programme runs weekly over four 1 hour sessions and involves showing parents of pre-verbal infants how to introduce British Sign Language, based on Joseph Garcia’s SIGNwith your BABY approach, and demonstrating positive interaction strategies from the TIME to TALK preverbal communication programme, a parent course that colleagues and I had run successfully for many years with parents of children with delayed/disordered language development.
The infants participating in the programme can be as young as 6 months as parents learn the techniques and then introduce the signs at around 8 months. The course objectives are that carers will:
- develop a special bond with their infants through excellent communication
- be appraised of the delights and benefits of signing with babies
- have an initial signing vocabulary of over 30 signs
- understand when and how to introduce new signs
- be aware of how communication develops and the influences on this
- be aware of positive interaction strategies that promote spoken language development.
Care was taken in the development of the programme to address different learning styles and present activities in a fun, interactive way. The course is also designed to be jargon-free with a commonsensical approach, so that it could be run by professionals other than speech and language therapists, such as nursery teachers or health visitors.
The benefits of signing that I have observed whilst running three Accelerating Babies’ Communication programmes are:
1. Signing allows an infant to communicate accurately their thoughts, needs and feelings before they can speak.
2. Signing reduces frustration for babies. The second year of life can be one of great frustration for infants and their carers. One of the major causes of tantrums is the toddler’s inability to communicate.
3. Signing gives a window into the infant’s mind and personality, as they can communicate outside of the here and now.
4. Signing enhances parent-child bonding, facilitating a close relatinship between parent and child.
5. Signing promotes excellent interaction. Why? Because when using signing, parents automatically adopt positive interaction strategies such as following the child’s focus of interest, making eye contact, speaking slowly, and using simple key words (Goodwyn et al, 2000)
6. Signing facilitates an adult’s ability to interpret early attempts at words and to assign meaning to them (e.g. Thomas says ‘ba’ and signs bath, and says ‘ba’ and signs ball. Because he is using signs as well, his dad knows exactly what he wants.
7. Signing children tend to be more interested in books. Using signing alongisde looking at books allows an infant to become an active participant in the story telling and their interest in books soars.
A new client group
I’m constantly amazed by at the demand for baby signing in our SureStarts. In Canterbury we had been running a drop-in Language and Play group for preverbal toddlers and attendance was extremely poor – more a case of drag-in than drop-in. However as soon as we advertised the baby signing course we had 25 mums keen to come. We now use the Language and Play group as a follow-on group to keep parents’ interest in communication high. My next goal is to have a couple of the mums who have used baby signing take over the running of the ABC course.
Tania Allen is head of paediatric speech and language therapy with East Kent Coastal Teaching Primary Care Trust, Royal Sea Bathing Hospital, Canterbury Road, Westbrook, Thanet CT55BQ.
An extract from Signing the way?, Tania Allen, Speech & Language Therapy in Practice, Winter 2004.
Come and see us at the Baby Show
Thursday, August 6th, 2009
Baby Signing – a great way to encourage communication
Saturday, July 4th, 2009How can you learn baby signing?
A new baby will cry to gain your attention. Over the next few years, a baby learns first to interact, then to “babble” and to use words and then sentences.
Between 6-18 months babies use a combination of gestures and sounds to make themselves understood. This can be a frustrating stage in their development. They may point, shake their heads for “no” or wave “bye-bye”. Many parents are now making the most of this highly gestural phase in their child’s life by showing them some simple signs (derived from sign language) to enable them to communicate better at a far earlier stage than if they waited for speech. This is now widely termed “baby signing”.
Speech and language therapists often recommend signing if a child’s speech or language development is delayed. This simple approach can help dramatically.
Baby signing does not teach babies a new language, it supports and enhances the spoken language babies are already in the process of learning. This is how it works. A mother asks her baby “Would you like your drink?”, signing that one word as she speaks it. The baby hears the word and sees the sign. Babies quickly make the connection between the gesture and the word. They can then use the sign themselves if and when they choose, long before their mouths have developed enough to be able to say it.
Parents who use many such signs with their babies have wonderful stories about how it has finally helped them understand their children’s thoughts and interests. Take a look at the reviews page at Baby Sign Factory’ web-site for a selection of the numerous examples or visit other pages on the blog to view the baby signing forum or a selection of advice and tips.
By using baby signs, babies are less inclined to cry for what they want. Be it a drink or their blanket or their toy, They can ask for what they want using a sign. Not only can it relieve the frustration of the moment (for both child and parent!) it can also lead to faster speech development because of the rapport being developed between parent and child..
You might think such dramatic results would require a lot of work, but the magic of baby signing lies in how easy it is. You do not have to learn a whole dictionary of sign language, Just a few words which you feel your child would want to say to you if he or she could speak. Bamba’s First Comforts (a baby signing kit) is an ideal way to learn baby signing at home without the need to attend classes. The kit concentrates on the first words most babies use and need – eg “drink”, “blanket”, “I’m hungry” etc…But the possibilities are endless. Your initial choice of signs should be limited to your own child’s interests. Each baby is different and you only need a handful of signs to inspire communication. After that you can use more signs at your own pace and need only stay one step ahead of your little one! Bamba’s First Comforts comes with a booklet of the most commonly used signs – don’t worry the signs are based on natural gestures and are very easy to learn. What’s more it’s a fun activity for both you and your baby.
How can you learn baby signing? Picking them up from Bamba’s First Comforts the baby signing kit is a good way to learn and is compatible with sign supporting systems such as Makaton and Signalong and others recommended by speech and language therapists. There are many classes encouraging early communication and Talking Tots is a good place to start. Bamba’s First Comforts makes the ideal gift.
If you have been recommended to try signing with your child by a speech and language professional, don’t be put off by imagining that your child will sign rather than speak. This is not the case! If you need convincing, then think about one of the signs we all encourage babies to use without thinking much about it, we also all know that this sign encourages them to talk to us! We all like to encourage babies to wave “Bye-bye!” We naturally recognize that the wave will encourage the baby to enjoy the moment, make eye contact, understand the word and the concept and ultimately join in and wave back to us. In other words start communicating! Consequently “bye-bye” is often one of the first words a baby will say. Why do you think that is? Part of the reason is that it is easy for a baby to say, but could it also be because of the constant repetition and enjoyment of that sign? Very probably! If you’d like further information then please visit the Baby Sign Factory web-site by clicking the home button.